Saturday, March 12, 2011

Obsession #3: Mindfullness

During xmas of 2009/2010 when I my stepparents I didn't bring my sourdough and as I broke the chain the habit died. So when I got home I threw out the sourdough base.
I started doing research on what to get obsessed about and stumbled on a great talk by David Rock at Google. That made me think that this thing Mindfullness might be interesting to silence all the buzzing thoughts in my head and get some focus. But how? Rock pretty much only said that I should do it.

I found this Swedish (actually it is a Dane speaking in Swedish with danish accent) recording from a yoga institute. It was very hard for me, but I gave it 10 minutes practice every day for a week. And it felt good just to try.

Of course I Googled mindfullness and looked at stuff I found on YouTube, but a lot was just telling me to try it - like this good talk by John Kabat-Zinn, also at Google. A friend of mine recommended a lot of things and one thing, Erich Schiffmann's dry texas voice worked. I found an iPhone app and also a as mp3 tracks. I spent almost every evening doing at least one Schiffmann exercise. After two weeks of this I got skilled enough at being mindful so that I could bike and just bike. When I left my son at kindergarten I heard the bell chime inside my head and biked to worked. As soon as I got off my bike and stopped the mindfullness I felt how relaxed and at the same focused I had been.

I also tried swedish Ola Schenström and found that to add yet another angle.

I really liked mindfullness, and I learned a lot. I'll write that another day when I feel less mindful. 



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